Road Trip

We rented a car for a couple of days and decided to do a 500km circuit around the mountains and countryside near Salta. The scenery here was really fantastic and seemed to change dramatically every 25km or so (from winding mountain roads, to lofty vistas, to massive cactus fields, to flat dusty plateaus, to rugged rocky formations). The towns along this circuit were very isolated and very quiet! We stayed in one town that had a population of about 1000 people. We could only find one restaurant in the place and when we went there it was completely empty for the duration of our meal (and this was 9pm on a Saturday night!) We did eventually reach Cafayate (one of the wine regions of Argentina) which thankfully had a bit more life. Kadi was particularly pleased to try some wine flavoured ice-cream...white and red :) Anyway, they say a picture paints a thousand words so here are a few thousand for you:

Oh yeah...the Argentinean busses again!

Since we are anticipating some long and rough bus rides throughout Bolivia, we decided to go all out in our night bus from Córdoba to Salta (in the North West Andean region of Argentina). We paid a little extra for “Executive Class” seating on the bus. We’ve been talking about these busses in our blog before but they are totally different from what you expect from a bus....they are more like first class in an aeroplane (maybe better?)

We’ve now arrived in Salta. We’ve only spent a day here but it’s the nicest city we’ve seen so far. It’s a bit touristy but most of the tourists are Argentines so for us they are still locals. We took a cable car up a mountain with some nice views of the city and the Andes as a backdrop.

We visited the first museum of this trip and saw a 500 year old (at least) preserved body of a child (basically they got the child drunk and buried it alive on top of a 6000m mountain as an offering to the gods. The cold temperatures preserved the body extremely well and it is still kept at -20 C in the museum.)

Anyway tomorrow morning we are renting a car and will be off for a bit of a road trip so it could be a few days before our next blog update. Oh yeah....just now, Conor went to the shop to buy some water. He actually went to a pharmacy because it was the closest. So when the shop girl didn’t have the correct small change (equivalent to 10 euro cents), she gave him 3 aspirin tablets instead(!!)

Moving on to the Centre

After Buenos Aires, we took a 10 hour overnight bus into the Northern Central part of Argentina to the city of Córdoba (700 km northeast of BA). It’s amazing how much the temperature can change after a bus ride: we left BA in 20 degrees heat and it was 34 degrees the next day in Córdoba. The city itself is quite nice. It has a lot of old buildings providing character and history, but it also has 7 universities giving it a young vibe and also plenty of modern shops. It has a population of 1.5 million but it feels quite compact and has a fully pedestrian zone in the centre making it easy to stroll around. However, we were all citied out at this stage so after just one night we made tracks again and headed to a small town called La Cumbre, 2 hours away into the nearby Central Sierra mountains.

La Cumbre was exactly what we were looking for....a very quiet little country town with scenic views, a number of activities to keep us busy during the day, and a selection of restaurants/bars to pass the time at night. It is an extremely tidy place and all the buildings are very well maintained. It has its own Christ the Redeemer statue on one of the hills overlooking the town - very similar to the one in Rio de Janeiro only a lot smaller and the view is not as impressive. Still makes for a nice hike though :) Another day we rented bikes and cycled all over the place, including up to a nearby “Estancia” (that’s basically an Argentinean ranch) where they make and sell their own brand of foods including jams, chocolates and dulce de leche (Argentinean milk caramel which they eat with everything!) We got a tour of the place which was quite funny: at the beginning it was established fairly quickly that we had no Spanish and the guide had no English, but he still proceeded to talk in detail to us about all the different aspects of the production processes and operation!

La Cumbre actually has a bit of a name for itself on the Paragliding scene – it hosted the Paragliding World Cup in 1994. We had hoped to do a tandem paraglide but unfortunately being a mountainous town in the spring, the weather was quite changeable and we never had the opportunity :(

The above photo is our hostel :)

So instead we went for a tour of the nearby village of Capilla del Monte and surrounding countryside. It was quite nice but is most famous for its numerous encounters with UFOs (they even have a UFO information centre in the town). Some of the recorded incidents include:

• In 1935, a local reported seeing a strange being dressed in a tight fitting suit while he was out walking on a country road.


• In 1986, two other locals saw a “spaceship” so big that its lights illuminated the surrounding countryside. The next day a burn mark measuring 122m by 64m was found at the point where it reportedly landed.


• A couple of years later, 300 people witnessed another “ship”, which left a burn mark 42m in diameter.


• In 1991, another burn mark was found. This one measured 12m in diameter with a temperature of 340 degrees C. Geologists were called in and they claimed that nearby rocks had recently been heated to a temperature of 3000 degrees C.

Unfortunately we didn’t witness any such excitement :( Or maybe fortunately!

Buenos Aires

We had visited Buenos Aires on our first trip to Argentina and so didn’t really intend to stay long this time around - but we ended up staying for 5 days. Partially because we were getting over jet-lag (it takes a while to adjust when day and night just switch places), partially because we needed time to plan our itinerary (we did no planning for this trip before getting here) and partially because we met a friend here (Adrian, an Irish guy we know from Australia) but mostly because we really like BA and it is easy to lose time there.

It was actually quite a coincidence how we met Adrian: We had found out the week before we left that he would be in Buenos Aires around the same time as us so we intended to catch up at some stage. When we arrived, we decided to get a hostel a bit out of the city centre (because we had stayed there last time and wanted to see somewhere different). Later, in a coffee shop we got chatting to him on Facebook and it turned out that he was in an internet cafe just a few doors down the block! BA is a big city and there are many neighbourhoods but the chance that he was so close was amazing!

So what did we get up to in BA?

There is a famous cemetery in the city, Cemeterio de la Recoleta, where all the coffins are placed in crypts rather than buried underground. It is like a town with lots of streets, and all the crypts are like little houses. It is a bit weird because you can look in the doors/gates of each crypt and see the coffins and some are very old at this stage. Evita is “buried” there along with a lot of other rich and famous.

One of the nights we went for a Tango lesson with Adrian and his friend Jamie (another Irish guy who recently moved out here). Jamie had heard about these lessons and we went for them because they were a lot cheaper than the ones for tourists advertised in the hostel. When we got there, people were already dancing and we didn’t see any other foreigners. We weren’t very sure about the whole thing....it looked just like some local party. But eventually the dance floor was cleared, they put on a quick Tango performance and then the lessons started....in Spanish! We don’t speak much Spanish beyond buying bus tickets and ordering food so it was a bit interesting to say the least! But it was all right because it’s all about body language.

Afterwards, we went out to a Night Club and were pleased that as we entered, we were given “VIP” wristbands...permitting us access to the VIP area of the club. It was kind of confusing as to why we got them (we thought it was a mistake), but we found out afterwards that they give them to all the Gringos (foreigners) so we will feel special and spend more money.

Another night, we had the opportunity (through Jamie) to join a barbeque with some local Argentineans. Barbeques are a big part of their life – they eat on average 70kg of meet per person a year! They eat meat every day and the barbeque had a LOT. No bread and very little side salad (which only the girls ate). Basically a plate full of different kinds of meat! It was a pleasure meeting the locals: we found them very friendly and welcoming (even though we were only friends of a friend of a friend). They were very chatty and even though most of their English was poor, they were very excited to talk to us.

Another big part of Argentine culture is drinking “Mate” (pronounced mat-ay). This is a tea-like drink made from some sort of grass mixed with hot-water. The cup is full of grass with only a little bit of water that they keep topping up from their flask. They use a special cup and drink with a special filtered metal straw. All over the city, you see them carrying their mate cups and flasks and they drink it on the street, at home, at work....everywhere. Mate is all about sharing. One person will make it and pass it around the group, while keep refilling the same cup. The thing is, you can’t actually buy mate in restaurants so the only way to taste it is to be invited by the locals for mate...and fortunately we were at the barbeque. Kadi got a bit of a taste for it but Conor didn’t enjoy it (too bitter).

BA is a very nice city. Full of grand old buildings, crazy traffic, dogs (and professional dog walkers!) and loads of cafes and restaurants. After 5 days there, we boarded an overnight bus for our next destination: Córdoba.